More than 110 Iraqis have been killed and 300 wounded in a three-daybombing blitz in what al-Qaida's Iraq wing has declared is a campaignto seize Baghdad.Three car bombs, all claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq, rockedBaghdad on Sunday, police sources said.One attack, at a police checkpoint in the east of the city, killed three people and wounded 14. The second, at a checkpoint in the south, killed one and wounded three. A third, near an election commission headquarters, killed five and wounded seven, the commission said.Iraq has often experienced several attacks a day since the government tookpower in April. But US generals had said things were improving, with just sixcar bombs countrywide last week, the fewest in nearly three months.

President George Bush's administration sought to influence the outcome ofIraq's January elections, using covert operations to avoid a landslide by ShiaMuslims close to Iran, a US magazine reports.The New Yorker magazine reported on Sunday that the Bush administration debated last year whether to give direct support to former Iraqi interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, a Shia favoured by US officials, and other parties seen as close to the United States.But the plan was opposed by non-governmental organisationsbrought in to help with the elections, and then Deputy Secretary of StateRichard Armitage put an end to the project, according to the article.Covert supportIn the same period, however, "the White House promulgated a highlyclassified presidential 'finding' authorising the CIA to provide money and othersupport covertly to political candidates in certain countries who, in theadministration's view, were seeking to spread democracy", the magazine said,citing former military and intelligence officials.A UN official said the US was keen to see Allawi re-elected "The finding was general," a recently retired high-level CIA official told the New Yorker. "But there's no doubt that Baghdad was a stop on the way."

Except for the most excited Allah fanatics, the objective for the verylarge majority of al-Qaeda's top leaders is not to unfurl the green flag ofIslam over the Palais Bourbon or the Capitol, but to put an end to Westerninfluence over Arab-Muslim territory, to substitute it with a theocratic societythat would likely be dark, closed and anti-democratic. Bin Laden has alwayspresented himself to the Arabs as the best guarantee of the sovereignty of thisregion and the most faithful protector of the values it incarnates. Values that,according to Islamist militants, are seriously threatened by competition fromthe Westerners who currently dominate the world.A complex world shaken by two contrary forces: that which pushes for the integration of peoples and nations and that, on the other hand, which leads to a fragmentation of cultures.The political scientist James Rosenau talks of "fragmegration." His colleagueBenjamin Barber evokes the struggle of jihad against MacWorld which opposesthose who dream of a world without borders, even uniform, that is to saystrongly tinged by Americanization, to those who are fighting to preserve theiridentity.In this globalized world, the domain of the fight extends toidentifying values. Competition touches every aspect of life. Just ascompetition incarnates the essence of liberalism, hypercompetition is theessence of globalization. This hyperconfrontation affects regional blocs thatare being constituted little by little and which correspond more or less to thegeography of the continents: Europe, North America, and Asia.In the great Middle East, so dear to George W. Bush, people feel like they are not in charge of their own destiny. That is why they wish to regain their place in History.They thus manifest their right to choose their social model and their values.Bin Laden understood that well and manipulates Islam to fan the flames.In reaction, we have become autistic to the point of not understanding the newinternational stakes that arose immediately following the end of the ironcurtain. Playing the game of extremists by placing terrorism on a solelyreligious level leads us to an impasse. In addition to the reinforcement ofsecurity measures, if we really want to eradicate this scourge, it is necessaryto carry out a geopolitical analysis of the phenomenon.For the West, the question is the following: is it ready to limit its influence over others in order to build a world that respects the plurality of different valuesystems?

United States President George W Bush authorised covert intervention in Iraq'sJanuary elections by using behind-the-scenes operatives, in an effort toengineer an Iraqi government allied to the US and not dominated by Shia parties,according to an article in the New Yorker today. Investigative journalistSeymour Hersh writes that the White House secretly tried to influence theelections by undertaking operations "off the books". This was after thePresident had been frustrated in his support for a CIA operation to spend moneyon political candidates anywhere in the world who were seeking to spreaddemocracy. In practice this would have allowed the CIA to give financial aid tothe candidacy of Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, appointed by theUS in June 2004. The plan was dropped because of the opposition of Nancy Pelosi,the House minority leader. The US was compelled to agree to an open election inIraq after it became apparent in the autumn of 2003 that direct rule by PaulBremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, had provoked a vicious and escalating guerrillawar.

The deaths of three British soldiers from the Staffordshire Regiment’s battlegroup in the al-Amara area is a stark reminder of the dangers facing thegarrison in Iraq and is bound to add fuel to the debate about ending theirdeployment sooner than later.[. . .]Their very presence becomes an incitement as they become part of the problem. Senior commanders are fully aware of that conundrum, and it comes as no surprise that they have spent the past few months agonising over the choices available to them.Getting the balance right has concentrated minds, hence the leaked documents revealing an exit strategy. The timing is poignant for another pressing reason – the legality of the conflict and the official position of personnel serving in Iraq.An infantry commander put the problem into a neat but troubling perspective when he posed the rhetorical question: "Are my soldiers heroes or potential criminals?"During his battalion's deployment last year, there had been more than 100shooting incidents in which Iraqis had been killed. In his view, these werenecessary but regrettable incidents and in each case he could justify hissoldiers' actions.However, there are lingering doubts, which surfaced againlast week when six former chiefs of the defence staff raised serious, but as yetunresolved, questions about the legal rights and obligations of personnelserving in Iraq.

Violent resistance to foreign troops in Iraq is "legitimate", Shiite radicalleader Moqtada Sadr said in an interview with British television to be broadcaston Monday.More than 110 Iraqis have been killed and 300 wounded in athree-day suicide bombing blitz.Iraqis should not be provoked by thecoalition "occupation", Sadr told the BBC's Newsnight program in his firstinterview with a Western news organisation.He added: "Resistance islegitimate at all levels be it religious, intellectual and so on."The firstperson who would acknowledge this is the so-called American President [George W]Bush who said: 'If my country is occupied, I will fight'."

NEW suicide bombings killed at least 22 people in the Baghdad areayesterday, while relatives struggled to identify charred bodies from a fierysuicide attack near a Shi'ite mosque in Musayyib that killed more than 90people.The government raised the death toll from Saturday’s attack in the townsouth of the Iraqi capital to "more than 90", making it the second deadliestsingle terrorist bombing since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.More than 150 people were wounded.The US military announced that two American soldiers died in separateattacks over the weekend. At least 1,767 members of the US military have diedsince the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Presscount.

In the wake of the attacks in London, veteran anti-war activist Tariq Alispoke on Iraq, Vietnam, terrorism and resistanceDear friends, we meet in sad times. Before I start talking about the subject of this evening's meeting, I think it's important to speak a few words about what we're living through at the moment.What we're living through is an attack, by a group of terrorists, onordinary working people in London. It is not behaviour that anyone on the leftcan support.But why did these attacks happen? That is the key questionwhich the entire media and the entire political class in this country is tryingto ignore. They are trying to ignore it because the government and the mainopposition party know perfectly well why it happened. They have a guiltyconscience.It happened, without any doubt, because Tony Blair decided tolock himself in a coital embrace with the US president, from which he could notbe easily dislodged. He decided to take a sceptical public into a war it did notsupport.Opposition to this war was not confined to anti-war campaigners orthe left, it existed in the upper reaches of the establishment. The week afterBaghdad fell, a senior foreign office intelligence figure, who was nationalsecurity adviser to 10 Downing Street, wrote a letter to the FinancialTimes.He explained why the war was wrong, how we were stampeded intothe war by lies, and why going to war was placing Britain itself atrisk.London mayor Ken Livingstone has taken to quoting Winston Churchillthese days. We've been here before. Why can't they think of anyone else toquote? Whenever there's a crisis it's back to the Second World War.Ken himself, on a platform with myself and others, once said that one reason he wasopposed to the war was that it endangered the lives of citizens in London. Hewas right then and he should get a grip on himself.Unless you give people a political explanation for what has happened, the only other explanation is a civilisational one, which the prime minister gave--barbarians versuscivilisation.Blair says this, his wretched cabinet members have been repeating it, and even Bush has picked up a few phrases.We have to be very clear. If the killing of innocent civilians in London is barbaric, and it is, how do you define the killing of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians?In the dominant culture of the West there is a deep-seated belief that the lives ofWestern civilians are somehow worth more than those living in other parts of theworld -- especially those parts being bombed and occupied by the West.This brings me to the subject of this evening. Are there war crimes being committedin Iraq? The answer is yes. If the media in Britain gave a quarter of thecoverage that they devoted to the London bombings to what is being done toordinary civilians in Iraq you would have a gigantic, uncontrollable anti-warmovement.Iraq brings back memories of Vietnam on a number of levels. InVietnam, as in Iraq today, many politicians said, "It will soon be over, and wewill bring our troops home by Christmas."Older members of the audience may remember General Westmoreland, the US military commander in Vietnam. Every year he used to say, "The boys will be back this Christmas."Another of the generals in Vietnam gave a statement contradicting the politicians and his fellow officers, saying, "If they want us to control this situation we could behere ten years." At least he spoke the truth.Another similarity is the wanton destruction of cities and human life. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq. You can contrast that to the number of occupation troops that have died, about 2,000.In Vietnam the ratio was the same. By the end of the Vietnam war 50,000 US soldiers had died and two million Vietnamese.The big difference is that the people leading the struggle against the US in Vietnamdescribed themselves as Communists and were, in their own fashion, part of thattradition.Resistance

Tony Blair's role as George Bush's partner in the war on terror has put Britainat greater risk of attack, a respected think-tank warned today.The Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, said that Britain's support for the US did not mean it was an equal partner but a "pillion passenger compelled to leave the steering to the ally in the driving seat".The think-tank concluded that "the UK is at particular risk because it is theclosest ally of the United States, has deployed armed forces in the militarycampaigns ... in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and has taken a leading role ininternational intelligence, police and judicial co-operation against al-Qa'idaand in efforts to suppress its finances," it said.Chatham House warned that Iraq had created difficulties for the UK and the coalition. "It gave a boost to the al-Qa'ida network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qa'ida-linked terrorists, and deflected resources that could have been deployed to assist the Karzai government [in Afghanistan] and bring Bin Laden to justice," it said.

Note, for those wondering why certain links proposed re: London don't make it up (and I believe everyone who's written has gotten an e-mail reply on this), UK community members suggest something, it goes up. But Gareth has noted (and he's give permission for this to be noted here)that England doesn't need to be turned into "a country of fear monkeys" which is what he and other UK members feel some of the press attempts to do (they're especially critical of the New York Times' coverage). If an event happened in New Mexico, we'd give Francisco and any other members there the choice in selecting links (Francisco has already noted that he lives in New Mexico in posted comments at this site in case anyone's wondering if I just gave out his location).We're not a CSI web site (nor would I want to take part in one -- link goes to Ava and my review of CSI Miami) so the daily details of "We've just discovered this . . ." which are quickly followed by corrections and clarifications are of little use to any informed discussion though they do attempt to press the panic button. We have noted Matthew Rothschild and others on the topic because they're conveying something other than drama and melodrama; however, in terms of mainstream news (and "news") organizations, the say goes to the UK members. (As it would to community members in any region that a similar event occurred.)

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.